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A Little Devil in America 
by Hanif Abdurraqib

Hanif Abdurraqib is a poet and a culture critic — a writer I will follow anywhere. A Little Devil in America is his most expansive book to date and showcases his usual clarity about the pressures that creative pursuits, personal decisions, historical dictates, dreams deferred, and cultural trends all exert. In his new book, he focuses on the intersection of performance and the Black experience in America...

Science is a system that uses unbiased, empirical evidence to make awe-inspiring discoveries, but the ways in which we attribute and chronicle those discoveries are far from impartial. From textbooks and history books to scientific journals, the contributions, or attributed contributions, of white males have long been privileged. Others, particularly the contributions of Black scientists, and Black female scientists, have been purposely distorted or left out.

In recent years, authors, professors, journalists, and others have worked to uncover and highlight those buried legacies, but they’ve really only scratched the surface. From Alice Ball, who invented the 20th century's best treatment for leprosy at just 23, to Dr. Marie Maynard Daly, the first Black woman to earn a PhD in Chemistry in the United States, there are still scientists about whom books are scarce, out of print, or nonexistent...

“I sit with Shakespeare and he winces not.” (W. E. B. Du Bois)

In a Powells.com interview a few years back, writer Jesmyn Ward explained her affinity for the classics this way: “The reason that I like to use classical myths as models is because African American writers and African American stories are usually understood as occurring in some kind of vacuum — because of slavery….Yet, something that is so great about African American art is that we incorporate aspects of our lost African heritage with aspects of the various people in this country whom we've mixed with and encountered.”

I’ve been thinking about Ward’s answer ever since...

If you’re ready to take life by the horns, 2021 is your year! Or if you want to call bull on that idea, this is still your year! 2021 brings us to the Year of the Ox, the second out of the 12 zodiac signs.

Legend has it that the Jade Emperor said the order would be decided by a race of all 12 animals. The Ox was positioned to be the first to arrive at the Emperor’s palace, only to be tricked by the Rat when asked for a ride. At the last second, the Rat jumped off and landed in front of Ox. At least second isn’t last?

Whether you’re slow to the palace because you’ve been tricked or because you got caught up in a good book, we can provide some titles for the latter based on your zodiac sign. To find out which one, check out our list below...

OWN LABEL: SAINSBURY'S DESIGN STUDIO, 1962-1977 by Jonny Trunk 

America has never quite embraced modernism on a basic, day-to-day level. Minimalism is viewed at pretentious or suspicious. What is this company trying to hide?? If a product doesn't smack you in the face with "They Live" levels of propaganda, it shouldn't be trusted.

UK supermarket, Sainsbury's, got right to the point. Frozen peas and carrots? Green circles, orange squares. Sainsbury's Salad Cream? It's salad cream. If you have already decided you need salad cream in your life, what else do you really need to be told? The fonts are simple (helvetica bold, naturally), decorations minimal, proclamations of healthy, organic, or bespoke, nonexistent.

Visual design collector/hero Jonny Trunk was given unprecedented access to the Sainsbury supermarket's vast design archive — perhaps the most incredible collection of modernist, minimalist packaging ever assembled...

Hello Honeybucket,

Aunt Paige here. As a bookseller and lifelong bookworm, I’ve spent years of my life answering bookish inquiries: in the bookstore and at family gatherings, on the bus, at happy hour… you get the idea. If there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that no book question is just about the book. That friend isn’t just looking for a sad book — they just went through a breakup and they’re looking for an excuse to ugly cry while demolishing a pint of rocky road. That customer isn’t just looking for a book they remember from childhood — they LOVED that book, lent it to a friend, never got it back, and are still trying to replace it 20 years later (just one reason you should never lend books to friends you want to keep as friends).

That deeper conversation is one of the best parts of being a book person...

Fine art, like jazz or quantum physics, can feel out of reach for those of us without fluency in the subject. But as we all know from listening to music or watching movies, sounds, colors, and shapes invite a different way of processing the information set before us, allowing us to make new connections and respond to ideas in physical or emotional ways that words don’t always provoke.

Through mixed media, quilting, portraiture, folk art, photography, and more, the Black women scholars and artists below explore history, mythology, religion, racism, politics, and the Black female body in arresting, perspective-shifting compositions...

While the winter months don’t tend to see as many new books show up on our shelves (as compared to the bountiful spring and fall seasons), February still offers an impressive array of new fiction from around the world to help while away the snow and rain and gloom of day. Whether posthumous novellas from a Chilean master, short stories from Denmark, Spain, and Mozambique, a feminist classic from Romania, or the new work from a popular Korean cult writer, this month’s crop of new literature in translation is totally crushworthy. Read the list and find your valentine.

A Beast in Paradise (02.02.21)
by Cécile Coulon (Trans. Tina Kover)

Cécile Coulon published her first novel when she was 16 and her most recent one, A Beast in Paradise, marks her English debut. Winner of the Le Monde Literary Prize (Le prix littéraire du Monde) and a French bestseller, A Beast in Paradise was described by Le Parisien as “A harsh and combative novel which pays homage to the courage and persistence of women to stay alive and standing. Readers will emerge shattered and nourished...

"I believe there is power in words, power in asserting our existence, our experience, our lives, through words."
— Jesmyn Ward, The Fire This Time 

From Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth, through Fannie Lou Hamer and Dorothy Height, all the way up to Vice President Kamala Harris, Black women have been a dynamic force shaping our country. As we go forward in the fight for equality and the greater good, they continue to be at the forefront in many ways.

One of the best tools in that fight, known and well-utilized by leaders like journalist Ida B. Wells, poet Maya Angelou, novelist Toni Morrison, and so many others is, of course, words: speeches, articles, poems, stories, and books...

The Holocaust is ever-present in Jewish lives. It is a deep well of sadness fed by smaller tributaries — pogroms, Inquisition, exile, blood libel, exclusion, show trials, “Camp Auschwitz” — into which our cups are dipped before we are born, and that we drink out of duty, or community, or unthinkingly, because grief is a cornerstone of Jewish identity.

I have always struggled with this. I feel the magnetic pull of the Holocaust like anyone else, but grief is seductive. It has lulled many of us into the strange comfort of replaying our forbears’ traumas on loop, each turn growing increasingly nostalgic and soothing.

There are so many satisfying books and films about the Holocaust that it’s easy to forget that the Holocaust is not satisfying...